Instagram adds augmented reality face filters

Facebook’s Snapchat-style augmented reality face filters are coming to Instagram. Eight different filters will be available starting today, including a few different crowns, ones that make a person look like a koala or a rabbit, and another that sends math equations spinning around your head.

Instagram’s face filters will work whether you’re using the front or the back camera on your phone. You can find them by opening up the camera interface in the app and tapping the new icon in the bottom right corner. The filters can be used in any of Instagram’s shooting modes — photo, video, or even Boomerang. You can access them by downloading the new 10.21 update on the App Store or Google Play Store.

The idea of using augmented reality technology to map and apply animations to a user’s face was popularized by Snapchat, which bought Looksery — a company that pioneered the tech — back in 2015. Facebook responded by snatching up Belarusian startup MSQRD in early 2016, and the tech made its way into Facebook Stories earlier this year.

This is far from the first idea Facebook has lifted from Snap — adding Snapchat’s 24-hour Stories feature to Instagram is the real molten core of this entire drama — but augmented reality face filters were one of the last blockbuster Snapchat features that Instagram was missing. They are also just one small part of the much larger vision Facebook has for augmented reality, which the company laid out in detail at last month’s F8 conference. (Snap, of course, shares a similar vision.)

Instagram is also adding a few other features to the app today. Users will now be able to add hashtag “stickers” to a photo or video when posting it to their Story. Viewers will be able to tap these stickers to explore other media that’s been shared with the same hashtag, the same way you can already tag other users or apply geostickers. A new “rewind” video feature (also “inspired” by Snapchat) and an eraser have been added to the app as well.